Initial teacher preparation and teachers’ continuing professional development are two significant pillars of the teacher education enterprise. The former encompasses a wide range of teachereducation initiatives at th...Initial teacher preparation and teachers’ continuing professional development are two significant pillars of the teacher education enterprise. The former encompasses a wide range of teachereducation initiatives at the levels of diploma, bachelor’s degree, postgraduate diploma, and even master’s degree for teacher licensure purposes. These are widely documented in the literature.What is important is how teacher professional development contributes to bolstering the teachereducator force, which is relatively insufficiently documented due to the very fact that different educational systems have somewhat different expectations of such programs in relation to the ideologies and theories underpinning the teacher professional development program design and curriculum offering. Taking stock of a postgraduate diploma program in English language teaching(PGDELT) for teachers’ continuing professional development with a 31-year history housed at a premier teacher education institution in Singapore, which has successfully graduated over 1, 000 English language teachers for colleges and universities in China, I intend to highlight some of its key features, as a former student and then a lecturer on the program, in order to draw implications for sustainable growth of language teacher education programs, especially those whose main purposes are to prepare teachers of English as a second or foreign language(ESL/EFL) and provide continuing professional development opportunities for such inservice teachers.展开更多
This paper looks at the key issues and challenges facing TEFL teachers in China with respect to prospective teacher preparation and professional development. Drawing upon earlier research on conceptual frameworks, it ...This paper looks at the key issues and challenges facing TEFL teachers in China with respect to prospective teacher preparation and professional development. Drawing upon earlier research on conceptual frameworks, it examines the knowledge base of pre-service teachers through research into the curriculums in TEFL education across diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate levels. A comparative study of the curriculum structures in the education of TEFL teachers reveals a number of key areas of concern: the main hindrance to the development of a stronger knowledge base of pre-service teachers lies in the serious shortage of pedagogical content knowledge, fundamental pedagogical knowledge that are currently available, as well as with the overall inadequacy of practicum hours. It strongly argues for the breadth versus depth in course design and calls for the imperative to reconceptualize the knowledge base of pre-service teachers.展开更多
文摘Initial teacher preparation and teachers’ continuing professional development are two significant pillars of the teacher education enterprise. The former encompasses a wide range of teachereducation initiatives at the levels of diploma, bachelor’s degree, postgraduate diploma, and even master’s degree for teacher licensure purposes. These are widely documented in the literature.What is important is how teacher professional development contributes to bolstering the teachereducator force, which is relatively insufficiently documented due to the very fact that different educational systems have somewhat different expectations of such programs in relation to the ideologies and theories underpinning the teacher professional development program design and curriculum offering. Taking stock of a postgraduate diploma program in English language teaching(PGDELT) for teachers’ continuing professional development with a 31-year history housed at a premier teacher education institution in Singapore, which has successfully graduated over 1, 000 English language teachers for colleges and universities in China, I intend to highlight some of its key features, as a former student and then a lecturer on the program, in order to draw implications for sustainable growth of language teacher education programs, especially those whose main purposes are to prepare teachers of English as a second or foreign language(ESL/EFL) and provide continuing professional development opportunities for such inservice teachers.
文摘This paper looks at the key issues and challenges facing TEFL teachers in China with respect to prospective teacher preparation and professional development. Drawing upon earlier research on conceptual frameworks, it examines the knowledge base of pre-service teachers through research into the curriculums in TEFL education across diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate levels. A comparative study of the curriculum structures in the education of TEFL teachers reveals a number of key areas of concern: the main hindrance to the development of a stronger knowledge base of pre-service teachers lies in the serious shortage of pedagogical content knowledge, fundamental pedagogical knowledge that are currently available, as well as with the overall inadequacy of practicum hours. It strongly argues for the breadth versus depth in course design and calls for the imperative to reconceptualize the knowledge base of pre-service teachers.
